chance, see my monologue?”
“No, sorry. But I heard part of it on the monitor. Sounded like you really went for it.”
“Oh, thanks. Yes, I do think I went for it, part of it at least.”
“Cool. Well, good luck with the callbacks.”
The callbacks . I forgot about the callbacks. There’s probably no hope of one now. But maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe there’s still hope if only, I can’t help thinking—if only I stayed standing, if only I hadn’t missed the chair, if only I made better undergarment choices.
I want to ask someone how bad it was exactly, but the backstage area is so small that all the students here now are waiting for their turn and too nervous to talk. Anyone who could have been watching from the wings is probably downstairs now in the green room, smoking cigarettes and talking about themselves. As much as I want feedback, I don’t feel like going down there. I can face one person trying in vain to convince me it wasn’t so bad, but not a sea of pitying faces.
Instead, I duck out into the alley behind the theater. I figure I’ll just have a smoke and be by myself and maybe figure out what actually happened.
But of course, I’m not the only one who thought of the alley, either; five or six classmates are already out there smoking and talking in hushed tones.
“Hey, how’d you feel?” Don asks, looking genuinely interested.
Don can be catty and competitive, but he’s also a walking theater encyclopedia. He has a huge collection of Playbills he inherited from his father, who was a Broadway director, and he’s memorized them to the point where he might actually believe he not only saw every one of the productions, but was in them, too.
“I’m not sure. I think there was something weird in the monologue, but I’m not sure what.”
“I didn’t see it,” Don says with a shrug.
What a relief! News hasn’t spread. At least, not yet.
“But I heard some of it on the monitor. You dropped a section,” he says, his eyes narrowing.
“I did?”
“Yeah. You dropped the stuff about how your mother knows where you go on Monday nights, and how she has a crush on your boss, too. But it was just a couple of lines. I’m sure no one noticed.”
Don turns back to his conversation, and my head starts spinning. I dropped a section. I fell, exposing a yet-to-be-determined portion of my naked body, and I dropped a section. That information destroys the last bit of hope I had that, despite the obvious blunder, it might have gone better than I thought.
I picture the audience, the agents and casting people I’ll probably never get to meet now, and I’m suddenly and overwhelmingly tired. I wish I could go home. I wish I could go back to Brooklyn and get in bed and hide, but I have to wait until everyone is done and help clean up the theater and then get feedback from Stavros, as if there could be anything to say to me except “don’t fall next time.”
I don’t feel like running into anyone else, but there are no other places to hide. I could wait in the lobby, but the audience will be letting out soon. Maybe I’ll just stand outside and then slip back in when people start leaving. At least I can be alone outside.
Avoiding the greenroom means avoiding my coat, and after only a few minutes of loitering in front of the theater, I’m already shivering. But it feels good, too. I want to feel something that is actually something. A feeling that is identifiable and real.
A sense of gloom creeps over me. The cold is helping me think more clearly and I can almost put into words this ominous thought I haven’t yet named.
Then, all at once, it comes to me: What’s the point?
If I left show business tomorrow, no one would know and no one would care. And what kind of person wants to work in a business that’s completely indifferent to her efforts? If I stayed, no one would thank me for my presence, either. I’m not exactly Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, something
“No, sorry. But I heard part of it on the monitor. Sounded like you really went for it.”
“Oh, thanks. Yes, I do think I went for it, part of it at least.”
“Cool. Well, good luck with the callbacks.”
The callbacks . I forgot about the callbacks. There’s probably no hope of one now. But maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought. Maybe there’s still hope if only, I can’t help thinking—if only I stayed standing, if only I hadn’t missed the chair, if only I made better undergarment choices.
I want to ask someone how bad it was exactly, but the backstage area is so small that all the students here now are waiting for their turn and too nervous to talk. Anyone who could have been watching from the wings is probably downstairs now in the green room, smoking cigarettes and talking about themselves. As much as I want feedback, I don’t feel like going down there. I can face one person trying in vain to convince me it wasn’t so bad, but not a sea of pitying faces.
Instead, I duck out into the alley behind the theater. I figure I’ll just have a smoke and be by myself and maybe figure out what actually happened.
But of course, I’m not the only one who thought of the alley, either; five or six classmates are already out there smoking and talking in hushed tones.
“Hey, how’d you feel?” Don asks, looking genuinely interested.
Don can be catty and competitive, but he’s also a walking theater encyclopedia. He has a huge collection of Playbills he inherited from his father, who was a Broadway director, and he’s memorized them to the point where he might actually believe he not only saw every one of the productions, but was in them, too.
“I’m not sure. I think there was something weird in the monologue, but I’m not sure what.”
“I didn’t see it,” Don says with a shrug.
What a relief! News hasn’t spread. At least, not yet.
“But I heard some of it on the monitor. You dropped a section,” he says, his eyes narrowing.
“I did?”
“Yeah. You dropped the stuff about how your mother knows where you go on Monday nights, and how she has a crush on your boss, too. But it was just a couple of lines. I’m sure no one noticed.”
Don turns back to his conversation, and my head starts spinning. I dropped a section. I fell, exposing a yet-to-be-determined portion of my naked body, and I dropped a section. That information destroys the last bit of hope I had that, despite the obvious blunder, it might have gone better than I thought.
I picture the audience, the agents and casting people I’ll probably never get to meet now, and I’m suddenly and overwhelmingly tired. I wish I could go home. I wish I could go back to Brooklyn and get in bed and hide, but I have to wait until everyone is done and help clean up the theater and then get feedback from Stavros, as if there could be anything to say to me except “don’t fall next time.”
I don’t feel like running into anyone else, but there are no other places to hide. I could wait in the lobby, but the audience will be letting out soon. Maybe I’ll just stand outside and then slip back in when people start leaving. At least I can be alone outside.
Avoiding the greenroom means avoiding my coat, and after only a few minutes of loitering in front of the theater, I’m already shivering. But it feels good, too. I want to feel something that is actually something. A feeling that is identifiable and real.
A sense of gloom creeps over me. The cold is helping me think more clearly and I can almost put into words this ominous thought I haven’t yet named.
Then, all at once, it comes to me: What’s the point?
If I left show business tomorrow, no one would know and no one would care. And what kind of person wants to work in a business that’s completely indifferent to her efforts? If I stayed, no one would thank me for my presence, either. I’m not exactly Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, something
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